The Green Hornet (2011)

Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz
Director: Michael Gondry
Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime
Rating: D

If I were to say just one thing about The Green Hornet it would be “don’t see this movie.”  That’s it, nothing more, review done.  Okay? No?

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, a spoiled rich manchild (which I guess is a step up from his usual working class, stoned manchild) who inherits a newspaper after his father’s death.  Reid also inherits Kato (Chou), a mechanic and martial artist.  The two have a bromantic bonding moment during which they determine that they both hated Reid’s father, decapitate a memorial statue for his father, and then decide to become crime fighting superheroes.  As superheroes they go up against Russian mobster Benjamin Chudnofksy (Waltz), because it’s always smart to go up against the Russian mob.  Oh, and Reid also decides to restore his father’s newspaper to its former glory and use it as a way to get the attention of the mob, so he hires Lenore Case (Diaz) to do something with it.  I’m not exactly sure what her role was, I just know that she ends up playing the love interest (surprise, surprise), to both Rogen and Chou as they begin to fight each other for her and over their respective roles in the crime fighting business.

If this sounds like an attempt to be like Batman or Iron Man, but appealing to a stoner crowd, then you would be right. Seth Rogen is very, very believable as a man child, be he spoiled rich or poor and stoned.  He is not exactly believable as a superhero, no matter how far on the vigilante side he might be.  I spent a lot of the movie wondering just why Chou put up with him, even when he wasn’t exactly putting up with him.  Likewise, I wondered why Diaz hadn’t sued him for sexual harassment.  In the end, though, I think it really says a lot about a movie when you’re rooting for the Russian mobsters to defeat the all-American (?) superhero. The big problem with Green Hornet, asides from the fact that it’s just plain bad, is that it’s trying to fit into a market that’s a bit saturated.  Superheroes are the big thing right now, but if you think about it they’re all really similar.  Both Batman and Iron Man are rich, very successful men who utilize their money to fight crime and have reputations as playboys.  Bruce Wayne’s entire cover is the fact that he appears to be little more than a playboy in public, masking the fact that he’s really a super smart, super talented vigilante.  The reason why it works is because he’s super smart and super talented.  Likewise, Tony Stark is a huge playboy (no mask there), but also super smart and super talented.  He’s also very witty and really doesn’t attempt to be any beyond the law, secret vigilante because he comes public with his secret identity fairly early on.  Britt Reid… is just a manchild with a lot of money.  He’s not super smart, he’s not super talented.  That falls on Chou.  Neither character is really strong enough to hold the movie on their own, nor do they really do so together.  It falls short of expectations of a superhero movie, which is why, in short I’m going to repeat my earlier statement: don’t see this movie.  Go watch Batman, Iron Man, or Pineapple Express.  Really, I think it says a lot when Seth Rogen works better as a vigilante hero in a stoner comedy than in an actual superhero movie.

What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker, Ben Falcone, Anna Kendrick, Matthew Morrison, Dennis Quaid, Chris Rock, Rodrigo Santoro
Director: Kirk Jones

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: C

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is another one of those movies very, very loosely based on some already established trademarks.  This time the focus is on the book that tells you all about what you’re going to go through when you’re pregnant.  With that in mind, What to Expect tries to present itself as the love child of Bridesmaids and Love Actually, following the lives of five loosely connected couples, each dealing with the trials and tribulations of impending parenthood.  If that sounds a bit lame, it’s because it kind of is.

The problem with What to Expect is that it doesn’t seem to know what kind of comedy it wants to be, or even if it’s entirely committed to being a comedy.  The genre of movie seems to change with each of the core couples, resulting in a lack of cohesion.  While this would be fine if the movie was a series of shorts connected by a similar theme What to Expect isn’t a film like that.  The Cameron Diaz/Matthew Morrison elements appear to be an attempt a spoof of so-called celebrities who appear in ridiculous reality TV shows, with what seems to be a rather heavy handed jab at Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser fame.  Elizabeth Banks/Ben Falcone bit is attempting to recreate Bridesmaids with Banks playing the Kristen Wigg role (complete with the actress who played Wigg’s awkward roommate playing Banks’ awkward assistant).  Dennis Quaid is Falcone’s father, with Brooklyn Decker as his much younger trophy wife, thus filling the role of the father who doesn’t get it and the inappropriate stepmother that we’ve seen far too many times at this point.  The story Jennifer Lopez/Rodrigo Santoro pairing is more your traditional romantic comedy; they’re an infertile couple looking to adopt, although Santoro’s character isn’t entirely sure he’s ready to be a father.  Santoro’s part doesn’t end there, however, as he joins a daddy walking club, featuring Chris Rock.  Thus, his part of the story descends into your typical Chris Rock type movie, wherein Chris Rock makes himself look good by surrounding himself with goofs.  The final pairing is Chace Crawford/Anna Kendrick, a pair of twenty-somethings who get pregnant after a one night stand and must deal with the consequences.  Of all the stories, this is the least comedic, more of a dramatic romance than anything else.

The stories themselves are a bit unevenly handled.  Some of them get a lot of screen time and really give you a sense of who the characters are, while others are a bit sidelined.  While some of these stories deserve to be sidelined – particularly the Quaid/Decker one – some of the front runners aren’t really strong enough to carry the film the way that they do – especially the Diaz/Morrison one.  The thing that works with a film like Love Actually is that while it has a large number of stories going on at once each one is well developed, each character unique.  What’s more is that the stories are all interconnected and support and add to each other.  Part of the fun of the movie is figuring out just how they’re all connected (there are even flow charts).  This is lost in What to Expect.  The characters are very, very loosely connected and thus the stories don’t really support each other in the same way.  The film does learn from other American attempts at a loosely connected film with an ensemble cast in that it has fewer characters and thus fewer plots.  The characters do get more attention, for the most part, but would benefit from more cohesion in the film.  In the end, I wanted less of the Banks/Falcone and Diaz/Morrison stories and more of the Lopez/Santoro and Crawford/Kendrick stories.